Marking time by the faces on our TV (06/27/07)

The TV personalities we connect with define our age.

If you're over 60 and grew up in this part of the Midwest, Ruth Lyons is a name that resonates. If you're a bit younger but over 45, Ann Colone has the same impact.

Ruth Lyons dominated the Cincinnati media market with her "50-50 Club" in the early days of television, and Ann Colone - who died earlier this month - played a similar role in Fort Wayne in the 1960s heyday of UHF TV.

The "50-50 Club" was never a favorite at our house; my mother wasn't a Ruth Lyons fan at all. But Ann Colone was another story. Her daily talk show on Channel 15 was a staple. And her influence was considerable.

Any celebrity performing in Fort Wayne couldn't get out of town without an appearance on Colone's show. It was all pretty softball stuff, as I recall. Nothing hard-hitting. Just chat, joke a bit, and try to humanize folks.

In today's frenetic media environment, a show like Ann Colone's is difficult to imagine.

So is "Ask Mr. Wizard," the star of which - the unflappable Don Herbert - happened to die the same day as Colone. Every Saturday morning in grainy black and white, Herbert, who was indeed Mr. Wizard, would conduct basic science experiments.

A young actor posing as a neighborhood kid would come up with some question about vacuums or gunpowder or something, and the next thing you knew Don Herbert was blowing up a pie plate or sucking the air out of a gas can with a vacuum cleaner. Pretty good fun if you're a kid on Saturday morning.

Like the Colone show, it was pretty clunky stuff in retrospect.

Herbert was a better teacher than he was an actor, but that was okay because the point of the show was actually to teach us something.

With their deaths the same day and with the retirement of Bob Barker from "The Price is Right," I've found myself musing about those TV personalities from my childhood, the ones I spent the day with if home sick from school or on a rainy summer afternoon.

Barker and I go back before his stint on "The Price is Right," back to when he hosted a particularly silly game show that I enjoyed when I was about 8, something called "Truth or Consequences."

Actually, he wasn't the first host of the "Price" show. That was, if my memory is still functioning properly, Bill Cullen, a guy who also was a panelist on "To Tell the Truth." And Art Fleming, of course, long preceded Alex Trebek on "Jeopardy."

Game shows were a favorite when I was a kid, but the ones I liked best were the ones that didn't focus on the game.

Half an hour with Groucho on "You Bet Your Life" might only involve a single couple as contestants, but there were enough laughs and enough double-entendres and enough eyebrow wiggles from Groucho to fill an hour.

The same was true of an afternoon show that aired only briefly.

It would come on right after school, probably when I was in the fifth or sixth grade.

The host would interview the contestants at length, cracking jokes, doing goofy double takes, giving the camera a sly sidelong look, all under the pretense that they were actually going to answer a few questions and maybe win a few bucks.

It went by a couple of different names, though it wasn't on for long. "Who Do You Trust?" was one name, and "Do You Trust Your Wife?" was the other.

The host? Oh, it was one of those TV personalities you might have connected with once or twice, a fellow by the name of Johnny Carson.[[In-content Ad]]